Voltaire

“ In a word, I believe only in nature.
Freind.—What if I tell you there is no such thing as nature; and that in us, around us, a thousand millions of leagues from us, all is art, without any exception. ”

“ Your Bible itself says that your God made heaven and earth, though the heaven, that is, the assemblage of stars, is as superior to the earth, as the earth itself is to one blade of grass. But your Bible does not tell us that God made heaven and earth from nothing. It does not pretend that the Lord made woman from nothing. She was kneaded in a very singular way, from a rib taken from her husband's side. According to the Bible, chaos existed before the world; therefore matter must be as eternal as your God. ”

“ God has given me sufficient reason to know that He exists, but not enough to discover whether matter has been subject to Him from eternity, or whether He created it in time. What have you to do with the creation of matter, provided you acknowledge a God the ruler of matter and of yourself? ”

“ So artificial is the arrangement throughout the body, that there is not a single vein without valves and sluices, making a passage for the blood. From the roots of the hair to the toes, all is art, design, cause, and effect. ”

“ In all England scarcely a hundred minds would be found capable of fathoming the mysteries of the for and against; and the rest of the world would be enveloped in ignorance; a prey to brutal passions; swayed by instinct alone ”

“ Freind.—Now, consider yourself; examine with what art, never sufficiently explored, all is constructed within and without for all your wishes and actions. I do not pretend now to lecture on anatomy. You know well enough there is not one superfluous vessel, nor one that does not, in the exercise of its functions, depend on neighboring vessels. ”

“ Indeed, we cannot suppress feelings of indignation toward those who presume to deny final causes, and have the rashness to say that the mouth was not made to eat and speak with that the eyes are not admirably contrived for seeing, the ears for hearing, the nerves for feeling. ”

“ The smallest herb perplexes human intellect. So true is this that the aggregate toil of all men could not create a straw unless the seed be sown in the earth. Let it not be said that the seed must rot in the earth to produce. ”

“ You are returning to the worn-out arguments that the sun turns on its axis in twenty-five days and a half, in spite of the absurd inquisition of Rome; that the light comes to us reflected from Saturn in fifteen minutes, in spite of the absurd supposition of Descartes, that every fixed star is a sun, like ours, surrounded by planets; that the countless stars, scattered through space, obey mathematical laws, discovered and proved by the great Newton ”

“ All that exists must have order of some sort. Rarefied matter must take a higher place than denser substances. The strongest press upon the weakest. Bodies moved with a greater impulse progress more rapidly than those moved with less. ”

“ The essential Being, existing by Himself, alone can make. This is why quacks, who labor at the philosopher's stone, prove themselves such fools. They boast that they create gold, and they cannot even create clay. ”